Martin Wollesen

Martin Wollesen provides innovative and strategic leadership for the performing arts through robust campus and community partnerships. With collaboration as a core operating tenant, Wollesen works with university leadership, and academic and student partners to advance the performing arts at the University of Maryland, strengthen faculty and student relationships in the arts; and cultivate new and existing community connections for The Clarice.
In 2014 Wollesen inaugurated a welcome-back arts festival for new and returning UMD students, the NextNOW Fest. This multi-day, multi-arts exploration is curated in partnership with students, faculty and alumni and features interactive and participatory arts experiences with boundary-breaking local, student, alumni and national artists. Wollesen believes that the performing arts need to be present where audiences are. Via his ground-breaking Satellite Arts Partnerships, he creates new community programs in collaboration with local arts organizations that provide opportunities for audiences and artists to create and share together. He is currently creating with community and commercial partners a new arts venue/restaurant in College Park that will provide new opportunities for artistic collaboration.
Prior to The Clarice, Wollesen served as Director of the University Events Office and Artistic Director of ArtPower! at UC San Diego, the university’s premiere multi-presenting arts program in dance, music, spoken word and film. There he created and implemented the Innovator-in-Residence Program that explores the intersections between the sciences and the arts; The Loft, a performance lounge and wine bar, the only venue of its kind on a college campus; Wonderland, an international festival of contemporary dance; and the Place Matters Project, the most comprehensive, interdisciplinary arts initiative in the university's history.
Wollesen has also held positions as director of education and associate director of programming for Stanford Lively Arts at Stanford University and was director of programming for University of California, Santa Cruz Arts & Lectures performing arts program.